SUMMARY: With an audience of more than 100 million, BuzzFeed provides the most shareable breaking news, original reporting, entertainment, and video across the social Web. What can traditional publishers learn from this model?

Founded in 2006 as a BuzzFeed Labs — a viral lab in New York City — the company is open and transparent about who it is and what it aspires to me: a social news and entertainment company that is redefining online advertising with its social, content-driven publishing technology.

75% of its visitors come from social sources (Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter).

More than half of its traffic is from mobile.

More than half its readers are between the ages of 18 and 34.

“Right now someone in a basement somewhere is coming up with a social media network that none of us know anything about, but it five years is going to be this big thing,” Lamb told Australia’s mUMbrellaearlier this year. “The human aspect of wanting to share media as a form of social expression is not going to change and as long as we (as publishers) focus on that we are going to OK.”

What else can legacy publishers learn this 8-year-old from audience development and digital advertising perspectives? We’ll find out next month.

About Dawn McMullan

Dawn McMullan is senior editor at INMA, based in Dallas, Texas. She can be reached at dmcmullan@sbcglobal.net